Have You Set Your Goals Yet?

A quick question, have you set your sailing goals for the season? Yeah, I know I talked about this back in February, but most of you haven’t done it yet have you?

I decided 30 years ago that I would be more productive if I learned to touch type. I never did practice the formal method. I just kept trying to use a few more fingers and got proficient enough to satisfy my urge. But I’m far from good. (I had to correct a word in that last sentence.)

I decided about 20 years ago to learn to race my cruising boat. I read books, subscribed to magazines and watched videos. And then I got out on my boat and practiced until I got smoother. I remember my first goal was to tack without looking at my tiller hands. Then I worked on coming out of a tack no more than a couple of degrees off close hauled.

The second year I spent my practice hours trying to stay on the wind primarily by feel and sound. I really wanted to move up in the fleet or I would have kept falling off onto a reach and letting the feel of speed become my goal.

Eventually my race positions improved because I did a hundred starts a year between frostbiting and the summer series. But my practice got sloppy and most aspects of my skills got stuck at just okay. When I sold my handicap boat and switched to one-design racing my finishing positions plummeted. The leaders were serious about winning and I needed to change my approach.

First I figured out what I wanted given my time and interests. Easy, I wanted to be in the top of the fleet again; I wanted to be a player. Vague, general goals weren’t going to move me up. The question was what specifically needed to change? The first year I decided that if I could start with the leaders that would make the most difference and so I learned how to stop and start my new boat, how to accelerate and how to work it up into the neighbor’s lane. Things improved.

When I bought a Laser everything changed again. My boat handling was killing my performance. Developing an instinctual ability to keep the little bugger from rolling over was the first step followed by the necessity to learn to nail roll tacks. The practice sessions were just jumbles of twitchy moves until I broke them down into individual goals: 1) quickly change my tiller hands 2) let the boat roll to windward toward me without panic or death rolling 3) climb to the new windward in a smooth rhythmic motion and 4) pull the boat back upright again without rolling too far, ending up in irons or reaching, or missing the hiking strap and doing a back flip.

I began to finish in the middle of the fleet more often with an occasional top three at the club.

General goals rarely bring improvement to specific skills. (I hit a wrong key again in that sentence.) Try it. Set a specific practice goal for this spring and see what happens.

“Is he repeating himself?” Yup! Have you set a goal yet?

Jay Livingston